I spent an hour reading through most of the threads this afternoon and there is some really interesting discussions going on. It's great to have such support.
Having had a DSR450 for two years before my new F350, I am struggling to get used to it's low light limits. I did a basketball shoot in a gym recently, with pretty good light, and I almost had to add gain to get any dept of field!

I had a little panic attack yesterday, thinking I may be best reverting back to my old camera and selling the f350 because of the low light performance. This would cost me around £5,000 to do so. If I did this, I could then wait for a couple of years and wait for the new sony 2/3 xdcam which shouldnt have low light issues. But today I decided to give the camera another chance, hence my research today. The quality of the footage in good light in fantastic, it's just this low light performance that bothers me.

I am an experienced cameraman and understand how using slower shutter speeds can help with low light situations etc, so it's not operational advice I need. But what changes could you recommend I make with the camera settings? Would turning the detail off help? So when I use gain it's not so noticable?

Also I am using a lens adaptor with my wide angle Canon SD lens, JY12x605br (it's a 2/3 lens). There seems to be contrasting views in this, does using the adaptor cost me light? Is there a definitive answer, and if so how much?

Most of my filming takes place in great light, and in situations I can light. However I cover some important events/ functions, which usually take place after dark (people dining etc) and where I have no control over light. It is important for this footage to stand up to the quality of the rest.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I look forward to hearing from you if you get the chance. I want to keep this camera, honest!!

Hi Mark, I too just moved over to the F350, but since I was coming from an old BVP90 camera which was rated at F8, I have actually experienced some slight improvement in sensitivity with my new camera.

As to shooting in a gym, you could likely boost a bit, since the background won't likely to be dark colours, and not notice the noise too much. As far as events go and people dining in the dark, try using a 20watt sungun to bring up the faces and let the rest go dark.

Other than that, I guess it is a matter of using the right tool for the job. If the client wants HD, then they have accept more noise than SD. It's not as if the other HD cameras are much better in terms of noise or sensitivity.

I believe that the 2/3's XDcam should be announced in another week or so at NAB, so perhaps you can move up to that, though I doubt that it will be all that much faster.

You are in that group of folks who have been shooting with SD cameras and then find out that an HD camera is less light sensitive. Even the 2/3 HD cameras are less light sensitive than their SD counterparts due to the higher pixel count on the imagers.

Panasonic tends to use a different approach to HD by using imagers that have a lower pixel count that can suck up more light, but then they pixel shift to increase apparent resolution.

I have noticed in my footage that the noise tends to occur in the darker areas but the truly black areas aren't noisy. So in that respect, you might want to tweak your black settings and gamma curve to get more contrast in the lower intensity levels. IOW, press the blacks.

It's has been my experience on actual shoots with both 1/2 and 2/3 lenses as well as both F350's and 750 HDCAM's that 2/3 inch lenses on the F350/F330 do not perform as well as dedicated 1/2" HD lenses. Lets face it 2/3 inch lenses are not designed to work with the tiny pixels found on 1/2" imagers. Others may have a different opinion but, I have used them side by side and that's what I found.

You will also reduce your options to a wide angle as you will find anything longer than a 7mm lens won't be wide enough for most everyday jobs.

Echoing the previous sentiments, it's not so much a question of camera but of lens. I almost hate to keep refering to it but the pilot for El Papel was shot interior with no more than 4 1X1 LitePanels and a few lit candles and the result was, well, enough that the footage was requested by both Sony and Fujinon for replay in their NAB booths in a couple of weeks. A low t-stop lens is essential for any video shoting tape or disk for the aforementioned reasons. Yes, the Panasonic will appear to be more light sensitive but that's because, again, of the aforementioned reasoning. 2nd Unit has a long history of reporting on the good and the bad of equipment we use and that includes our sponsors which, in this case happens to be Sony. And there are definite limitations but light is not one of them. www.elpapelthemovie.com has both high- and low-rez clips of the opening and other sequenses in low and I mean low light. The camera was the F350 and the lens was the Fujinon 10X10 (100) better known as the George Lucas lens. The bottom fact of the matter is that there is a didfference in SD and HD lenses and there is a difference in the light capability of the various lenses. For drama, or low-light situations, you're going to have to know your lenses and, yes, pay a little more for the quality glass. A standard ENG-type lens isn't going to cut it the way the same lens would on an SD camera which is where the, "know your light, lens-camera" relationship comes in. As for the adapter taking the 1/2" camera up to accept a 2/3" lens, there's little if any light issues there. The issue is mainly a focal multiplier. Some say 1.37 and some say 1.34. Use either one and you're in the shot but this multiplier doersn't affect the light issue.

Canging from my 2/3 inch SD lens to a dedicated 1/2 HD lens did make a difference in light sensitivity. Obviously the SD lens was f 2.0 and the HD one is f 1.4 so that's the explanation. The use of the 2/3 inch adapter doesn't influence light sensitivity since it doesn't feature any glass at all. It's just an expensive piece of metal.

With all due respect, it's an expensive piece of metal that opens up a whole new world to cinematographers who know and are comfortable with their 2/3" glass, demand the performance their 2/3" glass can provide and are able to save substantially by renting or purchasing the XDCAM instead of the 2/3" counterparts putting that savings into quality optics.

Yes, Jonathan is quit right: the expensive piece of metal opens up a lot of possibilities which makes its investment worthwile. But for the pure physical thing you get I still think it's expensive ;-)

Greg's information about the lenses being identical from the flange section forward seems correct to me too. I therefore have only 3 reasons to use 1/2 inch HD glass rather than 2/3 inch:
1: Widest Angles, no 1.37 factor to concern
2: Alister Chapmans explanation, which I found very understandble on this link:http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...ghlight=lenses
(read his post of Januar 8th 2007)
3: Direct contact to the camera for the best fit possible.

And personally: no cables from the lens and zoom and focus settings visible in the viewfinder (at least with Fujinon I use).

But then again the endresult is what counts. If you can obtain the results your looking for with any lens that fits it should be okay.

I think that you can make the 2/3" lenses work for you, but be aware of the limitations of using the 2/3" adaptors and lenses that Ron, Alister and Theirry mention in these threads. It also depends on the type of work that you do.

If you shoot 90% of the time on a Tripod or Dolly then having a front heavy camera may not make a difference. If you shoot a lot of handheld material and need a wider angle of view then having a 1/2" lens makes a lot of sense.

Just remember that there is a big difference in quality from lens to lens and it doesn't make much difference whether it has HD on the lens or not. There are some crappy lenses out there with HD on them. There are also some beautiful glass put out by both manufacturers at the middle to high end of the HD lens spectrum. Same for the 2/3" HD lenses.

Good glass is good glass. Don't settle for something at the low end whether it is 1/2" or 2/3"